August 31, 2005

Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store after Hurricane Katrina came through the area in New Orleans, Louisiana.(AFP/Getty Images/Chris Graythen)

vs.

A young man walks through chest deep flood water after looting a grocery store in New Orleans on Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005. Flood waters continue to rise in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina did extensive damage when it made landfall on Monday. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)

So, apparently, the white folk of New Orleans are hardy survivors, while the black folk are a bunch of opportunistic theiving bastards.Links: Photo 1 and Photo 2

7 comments:

Yah that caption for the first one might be pretty bad... but can you seriously tell me that the majority of people who are looting are just taking food and water? When you see people (and in the majority of photos (I can't actually recall seeing a white person) they're black)stealing not food, but tennis shoes, jeans, and jewelry - when they're even stealing cars - it becomes no surprise when he gets identified as a looter... not saying it's justified, but still...

Just thought of something - there is a time difference between the two. I could definitely see a situation where the second caption was written after the looting became more widespread and out of control...

Also - they're from different news agencies. Isn't it possible that the first agency decided to be more optimistic in general about the situation earlier on, and the AP, after realizing the nature of the looting, decided to call it what it was?

Yes, apparently the french press and the regular AP have different stances on what constitutes looting and whats resourceful scavenging. At the same time, I feel like this could have easily come out of AP, or just the AFP, and to some extent, Yahoo should be aware of its content.The racism here is unintentional and possibly nonexistent. On the other hand, when I see a few hours of footage a day that includes black people looting stores, even though it is a fair picture of whats going on down there, I cringe to think how this reinforces the racist notions of others.

I think the looting is a mix of resourcefulness and bad information. If these people realized that New Orleans will not be inhabited for the next 3 months or so, they probably wouldn't bother trudging through sewage-infested water with a 50 pound TV. But how do they know that?On the other hand, I saw a group of people breaking into a convenience store stealing air mattreses, and rowing away in them. Now thats clever.And honestly, who cares about the property? Screw it, stop trying to prevent looting. First of all, its inevitable, and second, it will be an insignificant portion of the financial impact of the hurricane, especially considering little of these store's products would have been salvaged anyway. Rant end.

Niral - I think you underestimate the overall costs of looting to the current situation. If gangs of armed men (as is being reported) are breaking into stores to steal the food, into hospitals to steal medicine, and into nursing homes to steal water, those law-abiding citizens who aren't looting are left with to deal with the scraps. Rather than have the resources that a community has available to everyone, the looters are hoarding for themselves, and that leads to further chaos and even more problems.

One other thing too - the looting has future consequences. If a person loses everything to looters, isn't he more likely the next time around to not leave and protect his property? And if someone in Florida sees this happening, isn't he now more likely to consider staying to protect his property? People evacuate expecting the government to ensure that their property will not be lost to looters and lawlessness - they'll be a lot less likely to leave if they lose their confidence in the government to uphold their end of the bargain.

The administration is really fucking this up. Apparently money was also taken out of the disaster relief budget to fund the Homeland Security Dept. Also, the CONgress is taking their sweet ass time getting back to D.C. They rushed back to try to save Schiavo...

CNN has that same picture with a caption about a man dragging groceries around.

You really can't blame anyone for their looting if they are just trying to survive. The value of the property left behind has already been written off. Its insured, and the magnitude of this disaster will in the future keep people from staying behind, no matter what they're leaving back.

According to the mayor, the violence is mostly drug addicts cut off from their supplies and going crazy.

There isn't really a distinction between law-abiding citizens and looters (or grocery looters at least). Anybody who is hungry/thirsty and has access to a grocery store will loot it right now, and those who aren't looting are not "law-abiding" citizens, they are people who don't have the opportunity to do so. If you're claiming that you wouldn't be looting groceries right now in that situation, I think you're kidding yourself.

Yeah, because two different photographers from two different news agencies caption their photos differently, it's obviously racism.

Not like one photographer saw people go into a store and come out with the goods, while the other one saw a large group of people walking down the street and just grabbed food floating in the water outside a grocery store.

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